French jazz project Old & New Songs to perform in the Magnezit Culture Center on June 11. The concert is supported by the French Institute in Russia, the French Embassy in Russia, and Alliances françaises de Russie.

"Why Old & New Songs? Because we create new using old! And it is not nostalgic, no “It used to be better...”"

The Old and New Songs project is a quartet of outstanding jazz musicians: Yoann Loustalot (trumpet), Frédéric Chiffoleau (contrabass), Fred Pasqua (drums), and François Chesnel (pianoforte). It was established in 2014.

After almost two years of work in various styles and areas (traditional jazz, improvisation and composing their own music), musicians decided to turn to folk songs – folklore. The project is aimed at increasing value of these beautiful melodies using improvisation and developing elegant and original music. Band’s repertoire includes works of various eras and countries and reflects diversity of musical expression of the whole world.

“Each of us keeps a melody in memory that was heard in the childhood or reminds of some period of our life, a film or a person that became a part of our personality, sometimes quite unexpectedly for ourselves. This is the essence of our inspiration: we turn to the memory while never turning away from the present”

Band’s repertoire consists of melodies collected during travels, or connected with events of personal life; favorite childhood music which had a huge impact on the musicians; works of the musicians with whom we are working now (from Japan, Italy, Scotland).

“Our goal is to play these melodies in our own manner and breathe new life into them through jazz improvisation. We implement this project inspired by world’s jazz heritage, but completely in modern style. It is an incredibly exciting process: to take well-known compositions as a basis and create something new”

The concert to take place in Satka, on the stage of the Magnezit Culture Center starting at 5.00 p.m. Free admission. 

Photo by Vasily Maksimov.